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Scandals in Brazil prompt fears of a return to turmoil

The president is battling calls for her impeachment. The speaker of Brazil’s lower house is grappling with accusations that he pocketed a $5 million bribe. The former treasurer of the governing Workers Party is in jail.

Even former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s most towering political leader in recent decades, is under the cloud of an investigation into claims of influence peddling.

A sweeping anticorruption crusade in Brazil is ensnaring one major political figure after another, throwing the country into upheaval at a time when the national mood is souring and the economy is reeling from a painful downturn.